Company reports a profit of $53 million, or 29 cents a share

Red Hat Inc. offered an upbeat outlook for the year after easily topping fourth-quarter expectations, thanks to growing demand for the company’s open-source software and cloud infrastructure.

The Raleigh, N.C. company, known for the open-source operating system Linux, provides software that is typically available in free versions and whose programming instructions can be viewed, modified and distributed freely. Red Hat late last year struck a deal with its longtime rival Microsoft Corp. to collaborate in the cloud, agreeing...